What did it matter? It wasn’t as though I’dkilled him with my three little anti-shifting pills. They were innocuous. I knew that firsthand, because I’d had to swallow one every day for the first three months after we left Boulder. Even though distance from the pack eventually blocked the change, Mom had used pills to drain the werewolf magic from my veins. The pills had belonged to my father, who’d taken them to avoid shifting while his bones mended after he’d broken both his legs.
I hopped out of the car and muttered, “I’ll see you after tomorrow.” And then I slapped the door closed, feeling the vibrations all the way inside my joints.
The following day, Lucy stopped by my bedroom at sunrise to ask how I was doing. I wondered if she honestly cared. I shrugged and told her I was better.
“I heard they’ve kept you in the running,” she said, pulpy arms folded in front of her DoubleDs.
“I heard that too.”
I waited for her to tell me to quit the contest. She didn’t. And I didn’t share my intention to drop out.
Her hazel eyes combed over the bare legs peeking from my sleep shorts. “Can you work?”
“Yes.” I stretched my arms. They no longer felt attached to dumbbells, but a faint soreness remained.
So she assigned me guest bedrooms, and I donned my gray uniform and tackled her task, scouring rugs with a vacuum, stretching sheets to their breaking point, dusting the mason jars filled with homemade potpourri. The physical exertion kept my mind off what Liam had insinuated.
But only for a while.
By the afternoon, after eating with Evelyn in the kitchen, I paced my bedroom like a tiger locked in a cage. At some point, I picked up the framed picture on my nightstand-a shot of me with my parents. I studied my father’s face and compared it to my own. Besides our matching dimples and perhaps the shape of our mouths, I’d inherited all of my features from my mother.
I growled as I realized what I was doing. How dare the Kolanes insert doubt into my brain.
I was my father’s daughter.
I was a werewolf, like him!
I set the frame down so hard the glass rattled. Thankfully, it didn’t break.
A knock snapped my attention off the picture. I went to the door and then thrust it open. Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I scowled at Everest, then gave him a piece of my mind. I gave him allthe pieces of my mind.
He dropped a shopping bag on my bed.
“What’s that?” I grumbled.
“A dress. I hope it’s the right size.”
“What the hell? You bought me a dress?” I threw my hands in the air. “You think I’m going to forgive you because you got me a present?”
“I didn’t buy it to cajole you. I bought it because you’re going to need it tonight.”
“Why am I going to need a dress tonight?” I realized I was yelling when Everest pressed a hard finger against my lips.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to keep my voice down. You don’t get to tell me what to do! You ditched me.” My voice caught on a sob.
Everest sighed and tucked me against him. “I’m sorry. My parents.” He shook his head. “And then-then I found out something, and I was working on a solution before I came to you. Now calm the hell down, so I can explain.”
I pushed him away.
“Liam hired a PI,” he explained.
My throat became a dry husk.
“The man’s been sniffing around to find out what happened to Heath. Guess where it led him? Straight to the escort agency.” His whispers sounded like shouts. “Sandra didn’t give him your name. She contacted me, though, when she couldn’t reach you. Anyway, she promised not to give you away in exchange for some hush money.”
“You paid her off?”
“Yes. I paid her off.”
“How much?”
“Don’t concern yourself with how much. I covered it.” He palmed his mussy red hair.
“I think Liam already knows. Last night, he implied-”
“He doesn’t know. He’s trying to guess, but he doesn’t know.”
I dropped heavily into the armchair, rested my head back, and sighed. “I realize my being there the night Heath died doesn’t look good, but I didn’t kill him, Everest. I should just come clean.”
When Everest didn’t say anything, I propped my head back up. His lips were so thin and his cheeks so pale my heart stilled for a couple beats.
“What?”
He sat on the foot of my bed.
“You’re scaring me… What?”
“Ness, I heard Lucas and Matt talk about Heath’s tox screen. How the coroner found drugs in his system.”
My spine went rigid. “So?”
“He drowned because those pills… They fucked up his nervous system.”
“Are you-are you-” Tremors crawled over my arms and legs, rattled inside my chest, rippled over my skin. I lifted a trembling hand to my gaping mouth. “No,” I whispered.
Everest hung his head then craned his neck and shot me the grimmest, most doleful stare in the history of stares. “Yes.”
The room distorted. “You mean to say… You mean to tell me…”
“That you killed him? Yes.”
My breathing halted as fear clambered down my throat and squashed my lungs.
I killed Heath.
For all my talk of murdering him, I would neverhave gone through with it.